Priorities ad shows free media rules

The most controversial ad in this presidential campaign can’t be seen where one might expect it — during the commercials.

But the Priorities USA Action spot linking Mitt Romney and his former private equity firm to the death of a steelworker’s wife can be seen all over the Internet and cable news programs.

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Priorities USA rolled out the spot as a commercial, and the mediareported it as such, creating the expectation that it would actually be paying money to air it. And Bill Burton, the pro-Barack Obama super PAC’s strategist, insists that plan hasn’t changed.

That said: Why should they bother? Burton said Monday that the spot has been featured on cable television at least 60 times and has gotten more than 700,000 hits on YouTube. (The spot actually aired once on Tuesday in Cleveland, but Burton says it was a “station error.”)

The spot — which features a former worker at a Bain Capital-owned steel plant — is the most recent example of how campaigns and outside groups have been able to get minimal investments to go viral. And while the Romney campaign has condemned it, the media piles on, and Democrats are on the defensive, it’s still getting free play.

After all, even in this age of elections fueled by billionaires and secret money, nothing beats free.

“The plan was to get it up on TV. We’ll keep you posted when it gets up,” Burton told POLITICO, declining to say when and where viewers could expect to see it. “We’ll see. We’ve shifted to stations in five states. We’re following the news cycle like everybody else.”

It’s a “faux ad ploy,” said Will Feltus, a media researcher at the GOP firm National Media Research, Planning and Placement. “It’s not a new thing,” to generate coverage for an ad that hasn’t aired, but “this is definitely the most extreme manifestation of it,” he said of the Priorities ad. “I think it took several days for people to figure out that it wasn’t on the air.”

Instead of the old strategy of drawing attention to their ads by touting the size of the buy, groups are now “trying to cut controversial ads in order to gain earned media,” said Stuart Roy, a Washington-based GOP strategist and former adviser to the pro-Rick Santorum super PAC Red White & Blue Fund.

Getting a burst of free coverage for contentious ads is a tried-and-true tactic, particularly those that are scraping for cash. President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy” ad that aired just once and is credited with helping Johnson defeat Republican Barry Goldwater.

The media’s constant craving for content across platforms and this cycle’s proliferation of super PACs — outside groups with unlimited cash that can serve as campaigns’ attack dogs — means we’ll see more of these efforts before November, said Evan Tracey, founder and former president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks media buys.

Those ads are likely to get more and more controversial as the campaign enters the final stretch, said Tracey, now a member of the faculty at The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. “You have to assume that we’re going to see these around the Mormon religion,” he said. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility to see Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright [and] birth certificates come back.”